


We be of one blood

by bobbinredrobin, Ein_J



Category: Firefall Series - Peter Watts
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Drama, Other, Trans Character, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26413177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbinredrobin/pseuds/bobbinredrobin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ein_J/pseuds/Ein_J
Summary: But who knew he was a wire until the current was turned on? (c)
Relationships: Siri Keeton/Jukka Sarasti
Kudos: 6





	We be of one blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Helward_Mann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helward_Mann/gifts).
  * A translation of [Одной крови](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698544) by [Helward_Mann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helward_Mann/pseuds/Helward_Mann). 



> to Xin Rei and the Blindsight Fandom
> 
>  **Translators' note:** this work hurt us, and we wanted to hurt everyone else. Enjoy!  
> Love and pain, Russian Blindsight Fandom.
> 
>  **DISCLAIMER:** Please note that the following is made for fun only. We all were doing it out of passion and not a desire to profit off of Dr. Watts' novel.

The third day, Sarasti breaks the self-imposed lockdown and opens the door to Siri's hideout from the outside.

The tent is dark, except for the red numbers on a dial. Siri curled in the middle in a fetal position, his knees drawn up to his chest. When he sees Sarasti, he twitches and freezes, all crouched, but then he lifts his head. He looks stubborn and doomed.

“Why are you here?” he says through gritted teeth.

Sarasti stops at the entrance.

“To apologize,” he pauses before saying the words. “Forgive me.”

Siri stares at him, blinking.

“And you think that's enough? That you can just maim people and then ask them to forgive you?”

Sarasti reaches into his pocket and hands him a scalpel borrowed from the lab, handle first.

“What’s that?” Siri pales and recoils instinctively when he sees the blade in his hands. He looks puzzled.

“Here. Hit me back if you want to.”

Siri picks up the scalpel with his good left hand, looks at it for a moment, and then sticks it firmly to the wall at a safe distance.

“Let me guess,” he says sarcastically. “Are you going to tell me that you attacked me for my own good, just to show me what an idiot I am?”

Sarasti shakes his head.

“No, Siri. I'm the idiot here,” and, catching a surprised look on his face, continues. “I'm trying to treat you the same as everyone else. I try to pretend that there is no difference. But I can't. I'm faking it, too. I also pretend that I don't care when I'm in pain. When you're in pain. But I care.”

He lowers his head and waits for the inevitable. Now Siri will send him away and tell him that he doesn't want to see him ever again.

If he could dream, he would imagine Siri taking a step toward him, closing the distance between them. But there is more than just a couple of meters between them, there is a deep gap between them - between a man and a natural-born killer...

Siri takes a step forward.

For the first split second, Sarasti thinks he will hit him after all – it would be a painful but fair outcome. But Siri does something completely unexpected – something that no one has ever done to him. He raises his left hand, runs the pad of his thumb along Sarasti's cheek, tracing the sharp outline of his cheekbone, puts his hand on the back of Sarasti's neck, and then reaches out and covers his lips with his own.

It's like an electric shock. An electric shock jolts his body, crushing everything he knew or thought he knew.

“Do it again,” Sarasti whispers. “Please. Please...”

His arms seems to be moving by themselves. They wrap around Siri's waist, grabbing him, pulling him as close as they can. Siri moans softly, clutching his shoulder with his left hand. The other hand in the carapace is scratching uselessly, trying to cling to the fabric of his jumpsuit. Siri licks the inside of his mouth, cutting his tongue and lips against the fangs, filed, but still impressive, and Sarasti feels the maddening taste of blood – Siri’s blood – in his mouth. It fastens his heartbeat to ear-splitting pain.

After an eternity, they calm down and drift in weightlessness, like finally docked spaceships.

* * *

Siri undresses for him for the first time. He unbuttons the collar of his baggy jumpsuit, shoves it off his shoulders and suddenly stops, feeling Sarasti's eyes on him.

“Is there something wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing. It's just that the file says you're a man.”

“I’m a man,” Siri says emphatically.

“But your secondary sexual characteristics...” Sarasti says carefully.

“Is there something you don't like about them?” Siri stands with his arms crossed. The t-shirt clearly outlines his torso.

“I like them,” Sarasti says honestly. “I do like them very much.”

“That's great,” Siri concludes.

Sarasti is surprised to see that he is no longer afraid of him.

Later, when they lay in a narrow hammock (Siri is stretched out on top, although in the conditions of eternal fall, the top and bottom are relative concepts) Siri suddenly says:

“Have you heard about the experiments which included splitting the hemispheres?”

Sarasti nods. As soon as the corpus callosum is dissected and the connection between the hemispheres is severed, strange things occur. The left hemisphere does not perceive images shown to the left eye, and vice versa. If you show questions instead of images, you can get different answers, as if each hemisphere is a separate person.

The vampire brain doesn't work that way, but if you're in charge of people, you should know how they think.

“Those who split their personality experience something similar,” Siri continues. “But they do it themselves, and no one asked my opinion.”

Sarasti already knows what he's going to say.

“It was so much easier when she was at the helm. I'm good at analyzing, noting details, drawing conclusions, but she... She always knew what to say. She was able to sympathize. Everyone loved her, and then… Then parents decided to cure her epilepsy.”

He pauses.

“I had to learn it all over again. Everything she'd been born with so easily. I tried, but I couldn't replace it. My mother couldn't survive this and eventually left us. My father pretended that everything was fine, but more and more often disappeared at work, not showing his face at home for months. Pug, my only friend... I think she was his first love. We were able to become friends again, but her shadow always stood between us.”

Siri raises his right hand and examines the scar that crosses his palm between the index and middle fingers in the dim light.

“I don't even have a name, because this was hers… Sometimes I feel like I'm nobody, that I don't even exist.”

Sarasti wants to tell him that he is wrong. But it's hard for him to find the right words, so he just takes Siri's hand and presses his lips to the white scar.

* * *

“The first time I saw you, I wondered how many people you'd killed in your life,” Siri says in a new burst of frankness.

Sarasti looks at him.

“How many mammoths are there on your trail?”

Siri blinks in a funny way. Sarasti continues:

“You wear clothes, eat food made by a fabricator, and stuff your brains with electronics. And you think that creatures several times smarter than you will still live in the stone age?”

“Oh, stop it! Now I see I've been a fool,” Siri grumbles, but his eyes are laughing.

“You're acting natural,” Sarasti says. “The normal reaction to a threat is to hit or run away. But with me, both options are useless, so it would be wise to choose the third...” He pulls back a strand of hair and whispers directly into Siri's ear, his lips barely touching skin. “Surrender.”

“I was right when I thought sex was like a fight...” Siri admits, exposing his neck with pleasure to his short biting kisses.

“It doesn't hurt to lose to a worthy opponent,” Sarasti grins, and turns him over, feeling Siri's body under his own.

* * *

Sarasti looks at Siri's face in the dim red light. It was the first time he had stayed in his tent for a prearranged night, and now he sleeps peacefully next to him, for the first time in a while not being tormented by disturbing nightmares. His hair has grown back, and now it waves freely in the microgravity field.

There is a strange irony in the fact that it was Siri, who prided himself on his ability to read surfaces, who was able to see into its very essence. To see him as something more than just a man-eating monster.

Siri awakens so many desires. Sarasti wants to embrace him, hide him from the world, admire him, caress him, bring the prey and lie down to his feet as a tame animal, accepting the same caress and punishment.

But time is rapidly running out. Sarasti can almost feel it dripping viscously between his fingers, and he thinks he can only do two things for Siri – kill for him and give his life for him.

* * *

“I’ve read somewhere that the ancient vampires were kidnapping people and forcibly mated with them. It's true?” Siri asks out of the blue.

Sarasti smiles a little.

“Think about how much time and effort you need to spend just to survive in the wild. A rational being will not waste energy on useless violence. If so, it's better to find someone who will go with you voluntarily.”

“But... I thought people were always afraid of you.”

“It is true. It just happens that your own people are more frightening than the monster in your nightmares. Vampires don't get along well with each other, but there are also outcasts among you - loners who haven't found a place in society. Why not join forces?”

“I never thought of it that way,” Siri seems to be trying the idea on. “Two against the world, then…”

“Besides,” Sarasti continues, “you're pretty easy to control. Slightly correct emotions, reduce fear, increase interest. Cause attachment.”

“So you mind-controlled me, too?” Siri looks at him suspiciously.

“No,” Sarasti now is smiling for real. “You're doing a good job of it yourself.”

“I hate you,” Siri grumbles, nuzzling his chest.

He lies silent for a moment, then looks up.

“I understand that you are not a proponent of senseless violence, but... I'm strangely turned on by the idea that you could make me...”

He doesn't finish, but Sarasti understands. And he also understands that he doesn't know anything about human thinking.

“I think we could ... pretend,” he says slowly. “If you tell me the details.”

Siri smiles wistfully.

“Of course. Let me see where to start...”

* * *

With a practiced motion Sarasti puts the needle to his throat and presses the plunger. This is the last dose that the poor Cunningham synthesized before falling victim to the enemy. It should be enough.

Siri looks up at him gravely.

“Tell me honestly – it's bad, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Sarasti nods.

“We can't hide, we can't run, and if we try to fight, we'll be wiped out in no time,” Siri says.

Sarasti stares down into his face. The light hurts his eyes, but now he wants Siri to see him, too.

“I'm afraid it is so.”

“So this is the end...” Siri concludes, looking away, surprisingly calm.

He has changed recently. Sarasti wants to tell him about this, but he can't find the right words.

“For me and Theseus, yes. But not for you. It's time to complete your mission.”

“What are you talking about?” Siri looks at him, and now there's real panic in his eyes. “W... what kind of mission?”

Sarasti hadn't expected it to be so awfully difficult.

“I won't do it,” Siri says after listening to his explanation.

“I'm still your commander,” Sarasti says softly. “So you will do as I say.”

Siri looks at him in despair.

“Please, Jukka, don't do this to me. It's just not fair. I don't want to go through this again...”

Sarasti puts his hands around Siri's face.

“Siri, look at me. Please, listen…”

Siri pushes his hands away.

“Tell me, then, what was all this about?” he asks with a hoarse voice, and tears appear in his eyes. “Why did you make me feel it? To make it even more painful now, right?”

Sarasti shakes his head.

“Please,” he says. “We're almost out of time. Let's go talk on the way.”

Siri nods obediently, but stops and turns around just out front and catches him off guard.

Sarasti doesn't know what he's done to deserve this. The world is collapsing around him, and Siri is clutching his shoulders and kissing him, just like then. As if for the last time.

This is the last time, he thinks.

“I'm not going anywhere without you,” Siri says in quiet desperation, when he pulls away from him. “Two of us against the whole world, remember? You said it yourself.”

Sarasti silently takes his hand and pulls him out of the tent.

* * *

The seizure is sudden. There are no forewarnings, no aura – all the muscles just cramp insufferably, and the head explodes with pain.

The surrounding space seems to part, and he sees a huge black double cross right in front of him . He wants to look away, but he can't, how can't a man who accidentally grabs a high-voltage wire let it go.

It looks like Rorschach was able to get ahead of him after all.

“Jukka?!! What happened?”

He wants to calm Siri, to tell him that everything is all right, to persuade him to get into the shuttle, but his jaw is clenched tight, and only a faint rattle escapes from his throat.

No, not n o w.

In a few minutes, his heart will fail and his brain will turn into useless organic mush. But he couldn't die until he was sure Siri was safe.

Out of the corner of his mind, he can hear Siri screaming desperately.

“Amanda! We need help!”

Bates' combat drones. It might work out.

He gathers his last strength and mentally thanks his tormentors, who inserted the chip under his temporal bone and did not pull it out even before the space expedition. Here, half a light-year from Earth, the chip was useless, but it was easy to reprogram it so that it would never lose contact with the board computer.

He has one more move left.

“Captain! Establish a direct connection…”

He feels Siri's hands on his face, and in the corner of his mind that is not yet on fire, he thinks he has won after all.


End file.
